Blog From A Hermit Dot Com

Here’s one for the hermit researchers – or the shrinks.

The wordiness of life has been bugging me more than usual lately.

It’s been almost six weeks since I’ve written anything for this blog and I have to confess there were moments when I seriously considered abandoning the endeavor.  I’ve talked about these phases before. The unusual element this time is I abandoned other writing as well.

Initially I thought it was just my standard hermit reaction to a recent surge of activity with Tools-n-Gizmos.com, our online business. I’ve always been someone who seeks quiet in response to the noise of making-a-living – I suspect it’s a recuperative balancing act necessary for many introverts.

But business has leveled off (for some reason it always does as summer approaches), and my psyche is still predominated by a very specific contemplative thread on the value-of-quiet vs. the silliness-of-CHATTER. Even when out “conducting business” my people-watching is repeatedly drawn to others’ noisy exchanges of (to me) useless irrelevancies – a large part of many conversations it seems. Then I reflect on the potential irrelevancy (to others) of my own chatter. I apologize if this post is rapidly becoming a self-fulfilling demonstration.

Maybe it’s a life phase thing based on the over accumulation of redundant verbal experiences.  Buddy Kathy and I did one of our periodic art studio tours a couple of weeks ago. Since then, I’ve felt restlessly drawn to re-prioritize painting over writing. I am only a recreational painter and my attraction to painting has less to do with artistic inspiration and more to do with exploring  the wordless – fresh reflective ground. Quiet reflective ground.

Or perhaps it’s just that when us quiet types quiet down, we ultimately seek absolute zero. The call to and need for silence may be the basic hermit motivation. The lucky among us have arranged our lives to accommodate that need, at least periodically.  I keep coming back to Thomas Merton’s words at the end of the short video I posted about him:

“This solitude confirms my call to solitude. The more I’m in it, the more I love it. One day it will possess me entirely and no man will ever see me again.”

I’ve already discovered something by writing this much:  just as talking-about-love is not the same as love, talking-about-quiet is not the same as quiet.

I’ll keep you posted – I think.